Here’s the menu:

Lemony Artichoke Dip with pita crackers (from Terry Walters’ Clean Food)  So, so, so good!  Kristin was surprised this is made so thick and creamy with cannelini beans.

Massaged Kale Salad with Apples and Golden Raisins (This was originally written with Gorgonzola, which I omitted).  Craig could not believe how good kale could taste and had second helpings!

Eggplant, Green Beans, Pumpkin and Basil in Coconut-Tomato Curry (from Mollie Katzen’s The Vegetable Dishes I Can’t Live Without) This was a big hit!

Zesty Basmati Rice with Cinnamon and Cumin (from Terry Walters’ Clean Food)

Sesame-Walnut-Ginger Broccoli (from the same Mollie Katzen cookbook as above)

For dessert, I had been wanting to try Turtle Mountains’ Non-Dairy “Ice Creams”.  We decided to compare a couple with chocolate and peanut butter involved, since I love that combo.  Kristin liked the creamier texture of the Coconut Milk concoction, while I preferred the bigger chunks of peanut butter in the Zig Zag.  But really?  Both were incredibly delectable and I believe difficult for most to detect the lack of dairy ingredients.

Purely Decadent Coconut Milk Chocolate Peanut Butter Swirl (YUM!)

Purely Decadent Non-Dairy Chocolate Peanut Butter Zig Zag Soy Ice Cream (YUM!)

The Vegan Feast was a smashing success!  All recipes were requested and shared. So, as you are Transitioning to Vegan, get back in the kitchen and do  some home cooking!  Feel the zen of creating healthy, comforting, compassionate food with your own two hands. It really is a wonderful way to express your creativity and we all know that making time to express our  creativity on a daily basis is part of living a vibrant life!

On another note, I want to again express my appreciation for all the wonderful chefs out there who share their recipes so freely.  The three sources mentioned above are just a few of the many who are spreading the word about how delicious it can be to eat more vegetables.  Check them out!

Do you have favorite go to sources for veggie recipes?  Please share!

It’s from The Engine 2 Diet by Rip Esselstyn and is simple and delicious.  I like to spread it on a piece of whole wheat toast for breakfast, on a wrap with other veggies for lunch or on some crackers for a healthy snack.  You can also use it as a veggie dip. Yummy!

Kale Butter

1 bunch of kale, rinsed and chopped

1/2 cup walnuts

1/2 cup water

Salt to taste

Process ingredients in a food processor until creamy.

Optional ingredients that I’ve added: nutritional yeast, freshly ground black pepper

So simple, so green, so fresh, so delicious.

Appreciate yourself for following your curiosity and being open to learning.

Check out Colleen Patrick Goudreau’s Vegetarian Food For Thought Podcasts on  iTunes. You can download them for free!  They were so enlightening to me when I was first transitioning to vegan. I go back to them over and over again for clear, articulate and knowledgeable support for all my questions about being vegan.

My vegan journey has been so fun and so filled with learning, which I love.  As with any interest I have developed in my life, I realize how deep the layers of learning can be.  The more I learn, the more I realize I don’t know.  In my opinion, that’s what makes it so fun……I’ll never run out of things to learn!

The final Christmas cookies have been gifted and eaten!

Happy New Year!  I wish you a year of vibrance, abundance, passionate energy, ease and flow.  Actually, those are some of my words of the year.  What are yours?  What do you wish for or hope to create in 2012? Whatever that is, I invite you to love yourself as you step forward and act on what you want to make happen.

If one of the things you’ve been curious about  is going vegan and wondering how to do that, I am here to support you!  The very first step I would recommend is to give yourself permission to eat what you want and not be rigid.  Being kind and patient with myself was very freeing when I was making this transition back in November 2009.  Honor yourself for being open and willing and follow your impulses.  You are obviously interested in eating less meat and dairy, whether it be for your health, for the welfare of the animals or for our planet.  Allow yourself to step in that direction at your own pace, without judgment.

One way to ease into being vegan is to try  Meatless Mondays.  Meatless Monday is a non-profit initiative of The Monday Campaigns, in association with the Johns Hopkins’ Bloomberg School of Public Health.  Their aim is to cut meat consumption worldwide by 15% by cutting out meat one day a week.  Their website is a great resource full of nutritional data and news, recipes and inspiring stories.  Paul McCartney has just written a book about Meatless Monday Recipes!

If easing slowly into vegan is your style, this may be the path for you.  And if you feel like eating vegan any other day of the week, please do!

I’m so happy being vegan!  I love all the food I make and eat while feeling so aligned with my values of respect for all life and doing no harm if possible.  And it is so possible, by simply eating incredibly delicious vegan food.  My husband is about 80-90% vegan since I only prepare vegan food at home but will sometimes eat as an omnivore when travelling or eating out. Oh yeah, he still eats sardines for an evening snack sometimes,too!  Time and time again, though, he loves and prefers my vegan food to any dish containing animals.

He was craving spaghetti and meatballs, but since I didn’t have any meatballs I made spaghetti with a meaty sauce.   I threw something together quickly since I was up to my elbows in baking Christmas cookies. I used Trader Joe’s extra fiber spaghetti, Muir Glen tomato and basil sauce and Gimme Lean sausage.  It was so delicious.  I kept the sausage kind of chunky for big satisfying bites like I know he likes.  I loved it too.  I usually love Rao’s marinara sauce as my go to jarred sauce but I’ve been trying to use lower fat ingredients and this worked well.

The next day I made this African Sweet Potato and Peanut Stew.  I borrowed The 30-Day Vegan Challenge from the library and was skimming through it and found this.  I know I am repeating myself but vegan food is so good!  We’ve been eating this served over quinoa for several days since it makes a large amount and the flavors just continue to get better.  You’ve got to try it!

What are you making these days that you love to eat?

The term used by the industry for a factory farm is a Concentrated Animal Feeding Operation or CAFO.  I wondered how many CAFO’s there were  in Michigan.  234!!!  

What technically qualifies as a CAFO anyway?  According to the Sierra Club, Michigan Chapter, a CAFO stables or confines as many as or more than the numbers of animals specified in these categories:  (I know this is a lot of numbers that you might be tempted to just skim over, but, if you would try to let the number of animals living in each of these inhumane factories really sink in)

• 700 mature dairy cows
• 1,000 veal calves 1,000 cattle (other than mature dairy cows or veal calves), including heifers, steers, bulls, and cow/calf pairs
• 2,500 swine, each weighs 55 pounds or more
• 10,000 swine, each weighs less than 55 pounds
• 500 horses
• 10,000 sheep or lambs
• 55,000 turkeys
• 30,000 laying hens or broilers, if the AFO uses a liquid manure handling system
• 125,000 chickens (other than laying hens), if the AFO doesn’t use a liquid manure handling system
• 82,000 laying hens, if the AFO doesn’t use a liquid manure handling system
• 30,000 ducks, if the AFO uses a liquid manure handling system
• 5,000 ducks, if the AFO uses a liquid manure handling system

As you can see, these are enormous operations.  Oh, and by the way, these Michigan, factory farmed animals produce as much untreated manure as 60 million people, which is 6 times the population of Michigan!  More on all this untreated manure in a minute……

Given the size of these facilities, I became curious about the number of farm animals killed every year for consumption in Michigan.  Here’s the awful truth: (Again, please let the reality of these numbers settle in to your consciousness, if you are able)

nearly 149,000 dairy cows

871,000 hogs

nearly 75,000 beef cattle

8.8 million egg-laying hens

168,000 broiler chickens

Do those numbers boggle your mind the same way they do mine?  10 million animals forced to live in pain and squalor and then  killed so that we can eat meat and dairy products.  And this is just in Michigan, 1 state out of 50.  It makes it less surprising to learn that the total number of animals killed for food in the U.S. alone is 10,000,000,000 annually.  10 Billion!  EVERY YEAR!

So, where are these factory farms in Michigan?  There are more than 230 CAFOs concentrated in 39 of Michigan’s 83 counties. (As far as I can tell, Washtenaw County has none). According to data from Michigan’s Department of Natural Resources and Environment, several counties have more than 15 operations.

Allegan County, in western Michigan, has 29

Huron County with 24

Gratiot County with 19

Ottawa County with 18

The city of Holland, in western Michigan, has the largest number of CAFOs when grouped by zip code, with 11 facilities.

Watch this award-winning documentary about the polluting effects of CAFOs in Michigan on air and water quality, and the subsequent health issues of the residents in the surrounding communities. CAFOs make the environment sick and kill billions of sentient beings.  And they make people sick too.  These are the three big reasons to be vegan.

If you still want more information about what’s wrong with factory farms, check this out.

I had also made a big beautiful salad.  It was a perfect light meal. I love cooking food for my husband!  He is so appreciative and complimentary and gets such pleasure in eating the delicious vegan food I make. I’m thinking of making this again for a first course for Thanksgiving.  It has the perfect blend of sweet and savory flavors.  I think even the younger kids will like it! Here’s the recipe from Skinny Bitch: Ultimate Everyday Cookbook.  I only made a few changes.  I used half of the amount of Earth Balance and two cans of pumpkin from Trader Joe’s. Deelish!

Giant Rutabagas at Farmer’s Market!  My mother-in-law introduced me to the delights of eating these monster vegetables.  So, so good!  By the time I saw these, I already had too many veggies to cook up so I checked with the farmer to make sure she would have some next week and the answer was Yes!

Have you been to the Spice Merchants at Kerrytown Market yet?  They carry an amazing array of spices, teas and grains as well as artisan crafted sea salts beyond your imagination.  All of their offerings are arranged in such an aesthetically pleasing display that invites you to look into each jar and be surprised by what it holds.  Yes, that’s Wild Porcini Sea Salt, Vintage Merlot Sea Salt and Spanish Rosemary Sea Salt.

Black Lava Sea Salt, White Cypress Sea Salt and Pink Hawaiian Sea Salt

Habanero Sea Salt, Chile Verde Sea Salt and Chipotle Sea Salt

Those pictured are just a few samples of the varieties of sea salt offered at this treasure of a shop.  I’m going to attempt to make some vegan candy and caramels so I bought some Fleur de Sel Sea Salt and some Candied Ginger.

After shopping for my sweet nephew, Gianni’s, birthday gift, I headed home with my goodies.  I didn’t even show you the tomatoes, kale, spinach, radishes or spicy salad mix I bought!

Here, however, is my giant parsnip!  All ready to be peeled and chopped to go into……..

Quinoa, White Bean and Kale Stew from Appetite for Reduction. Healthy, Delicious, Comfort Food!  Mine looks very pretty with the red quinoa I bought at Spice Merchants!

I love getting VegNews.  I am in general, surrounded  by mostly omnivores.  When I flip through my VegNews Magazine, being vegan feels like the new “normal”.  In these pages, I am treated to a global community of like-minded individuals sharing their resources, recipes, wisdom and compassion.  I feel so much less alone in my vegan living and very supported.  So I send a heartfelt Thank You! to VegNews for making my world a better place!

The new issue (Nov./Dec.) has a recipe for this Luscious Lasagna in the VeganizeIt column by Allison Rivers Samson.  I was looking for something like this to take to a friend who has just moved into a new home.  This is her special housewarming gift, along with a delicious salad, some Zingerman’s Paesano Bread, Coconut Bliss and double chocolate cookies for dessert.  She’s not vegan so I feel like I’m doing my little part by sharing with nonvegans how good vegan food can be!

This was only slightly changed from a recipe from Vegan Planet by Robin Robertson.  The sauce ingredients include hoisin sauce, tamari, sake, water, ginger, garlic and dried chiles. Cooking slowly over a low heat allows the sauce to be absorbed by the bok choy and mushrooms.  It called for fresh shiitake mushrooms and I only had baby bellas on hand, so that’s what I used.  I also added some savory baked tofu from Trader Joe’s to make it a little heartier meal served with brown basmati rice.  It was scrumpdillyicious!

As a side note, check out all the possible vegan food your local Trader Joe’s might carry!